At nine a.m. Erika’s team were assembled, and she stood up to address them. Along with Peterson, Moss and John, she had requested Sergeant Crane, a sandy-haired officer with a cheeky grin she had worked with on the Andrea Douglas-Brown case in Lewisham. There were two other detective constables, DC Andy Carr and DC Jennifer House, both young and smartly dressed, and eager to impress, and her team was backed up by three Civilian Support workers: young women in their mid-twenties with equal enthusiasm. As Erika opened her mouth to speak, she realised that Andy, Jennifer and the three support staff would have been four or five years old when she graduated from Hendon. Melanie Hudson was ten years her junior, and might shortly be her senior officer. She shook these thoughts away and turned to the whiteboards, to where the crime scene photos of Lacey Greene and Janelle Robinson were pinned up.
‘Good morning everyone. Thank you for being punctual.’ There were murmurs of appreciation. ‘For those of you who need to get up-to-speed on this case, Sergeant Crane will be passing out the case notes so far.’ She tapped the two photos of the dead girls, their battered bodies lying in the dumpsters. ‘Twenty-year-old Janelle Robinson, and twenty-two-year-old Lacey Greene. Janelle’s body was found on Monday the twenty-ninth of August in a dumpster adjacent to a small print-works on Chichester Road in Croydon, South London. Lacey Greene was found on Monday the ninth of January in a dumpster adjacent to a kitchen showroom in Tattersall Road in New Cross… As far as we can tell, the victims have no connection to these properties, but their deaths show consistencies. There is evidence that both were tortured over a period of three to five days, and sexually assaulted with a scalpel. Both victims’ femoral arteries were severed, which would have resulted in rapid, fatal blood loss. There is no evidence of fatal blood loss at either scene. Severing the femoral artery would have resulted in six or seven pints of blood being rapidly expelled.’
Erika took two passport photos of Janelle and Lacey, both young and fresh-faced, staring into the camera.
‘Lacey Greene was reported missing on Thursday the fifth of January; she was living at home in North London, and hadn’t returned after a night out on the fourth of January. She had been due to meet someone for a blind date at eight p.m. in the Blue Boar pub in Widmore Road, Southgate. CCTV footage has been requested, but this is taking time.’
Crane was now squeezing in between the desks and passing around printouts summarising the cases.
‘Janelle Robinson’s circumstances are unclear. She wasn’t reported missing back in August, so we have more of a blank on her last movements. She was living and working in a youth hostel near the Barbican Estate within the square mile, and from the original case notes, it wasn’t unusual for her to spend time away…’
‘What does that mean, “time away”?’ asked Peterson.
‘I suppose it’s a nice way of saying that she used to go off, go AWOL, particularly if she had met a new boyfriend. I’ve been asked to exercise caution with linking these two murders, but the circumstances of their deaths have striking similarities.’
There was silence for a moment as the team flicked through the briefing document.
‘Steven Pearson was arrested in conjunction with Lacey Greene’s murder, but he was released a few days ago due to insufficient evidence. Steven is a homeless drug addict who has been living rough and in and out of homeless shelters for the past three months. I don’t believe he had the resources or nous to plan an abduction. He was finishing off a long stretch at Pentonville when Janelle’s body was found, and he wasn’t released from prison until the fifteenth of September. He couldn’t have killed Janelle, and I’m convinced that it was the same person who killed Lacey and Janelle… We need to start from the beginning. I want a detailed profile of both girls, everything we can find out. I want details on the locations where their bodies were found; I want CCTV to build up both of the girls’ final movements. And I want their phones, their computers, any online history. Lacey’s laptop is with Digital Forensics, and her last known phone signal has been triangulated close to where she was abducted, but there is still no phone… Andy and Jennifer, I want you to get to work on this with Crane. Peterson, I want you and John to pay a visit to the youth hostel in the Barbican; we should start there with building up details of Janelle. Moss, you’re with me. We’re going to see Lacey Greene’s parents. We’ll reconvene here at four p.m.’
Chapter Twenty
An hour later, a squad car was waiting for Erika and Moss when they emerged from Southgate tube station in North London. The circular concrete and glass structure seemed to float above the busy intersection, and the light filtering through was strangely beautiful in the weak January sun. Lacey Greene’s family lived a couple of miles from the station, in a large detached house on a quiet, tree-lined street.
Erika rang the bell, and there was a scrabbling sound as the locks were turned and the door was opened.
Charlotte Greene, Lacey’s mother, was in her early fifties, and bore a striking similarity to her daughter. But her long dark hair was shot through with grey, and her eyes were bleary. Detective Constable Melissa Bates, the Family Liaison Officer, appeared behind her in the hallway.
‘Hello, Mrs Greene. May we come in, please?’ asked Erika as she and Moss showed their warrant cards.
Charlotte nodded absently. They followed her through to a beautifully furnished living room with bay windows overlooking the front and back garden. Beside a large brick fireplace was a large Christmas tree, still decorated but bald and brown, its needles in a thick circle on the carpet. A man kneeled in front of the dying embers of a glowing fire coaxing a pile of fresh wood with a poker. He was thickset, with dark hair thinning on top. When he stood up and turned they saw he wore glasses and had a beard.
‘Hello, Mr Greene,’ said Erika.
He wiped his hands and shook with Moss and Erika.
‘Call me, Don,’ he said. He had the same blank-eyed stare as his wife.
They all sat, and Erika explained that she would be taking over the investigation from DCI Hudson.
‘Why did Melanie have to leave? We liked her. She’d caught that man,’ said Charlotte, looking from Erika to Moss.
‘I’m afraid police investigations go through staff changes much as in other workplaces,’ said Erika. She realised it sounded like bullshit as soon as it came out of her mouth.
‘Why did you let him go?’ said Don, his arm gripping his wife around her shoulders.
‘We don’t believe Steven Pearson was responsible for your daughter’s death.’
‘How can you be sure of that!? You’ve been on the case for, what? Five minutes?’